1953 Dannie Abse Winged Back

One such winged me back to a different post-code, to an England that like a translation almost was, to my muscular days that were marvellous being ordinary. 365 days, marvellous;

to an England where sweet-rationing ended, where nature tamely resumed its capture behind park railings. Few thorns. Fewer thistles; to Vivat Regina and the linseed willow-sound of Compton and Edrich winning the Ashes.

Elsewhere, Troy always burning. Newspaper stuff. The recurring decimal of calamity. Famine. Murder. Pollinating fires. When they stubbed one out another one flared. Statesmen lit their cigars from the embers.

They still do. With every enrichment an injury. They bicker and banquet, confer and dally, pull on cigars that glow with blood-light. And the year 1953, like the arson of Troy, is elsewhere. Ashes.

1955 Gillian Clarke Running Away to the Sea

It might have been heatstroke, the unfocused flame of desire for a name in a book, a face on the screen, the anonymous object of love. Two schoolgirls running like wildfire, bunking off through dunes to the sea, breathless.

We were lost and free, East of Eden. It was James Dean, Elvis, Bill Haley and the Comets. It was Heartbreak Hotel on the gramophone. It was Heathcliff by torchlight in bed after lights-out.

The dunes were molten glass. We slowed to a dawdle, rippling sand with our toes, grains of gold through our fingers, on our skin, in our hair, without words to say why, or who, or where.

This I remember. The hour was still, bees browsing sea-lavender, and beyond the dunes the channel as blue as the Gulf of Araby, a name from the drowse of a day-dreaming lesson,

sun on the board, the chalk, Sister's hand, a far-away voice, as if heard through water, murmuring rosaries: Egypt, the Red Sea, the Bitter Lakes, Suez. A psalm of biblical names called Geography.

That was the last day the world stood still. In a year there'd be tanks in Budapest, over Sinai bombers on the move, and I'd be in the streets on the march against war, as Empires loosened their grip. It was almost like love.

1956 Douglas Dunn Class Photograph

A British Centurion tank in a Port Said, Egypt, during the Suez crisis. Photograph: Joseph Mckeown/Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS

We were Elizabethan girls and boys, Too young for politics, too old for toys. Then Hungary and Suez changed all that, Or so it feels in tired old retrospect. Nostalgia corrodes the intellect. It makes you want to eat your coat and hat.

One foot in childhood, one in adolescence, Rock Around the Clock made far more sense Even than The Battle of the River Plate –Stiff upper lips and Royal Navy dash, Its Technicolored brio and panache Heroic, gore-less, brilliant, out of date.

Like Ovaltineys in their Start-rite shoes – It catches up on you, it really does, This looking back, this old class photograph. Be-blazered in our uniforms and ties (Who he? Who she?) – pensioners in disguise As who they were, a pictured epitaph.

Pillar-boxes still red (though not much else is) And the scarcely visible orthodoxies All still in place, plus global urgency, Destructive wars abroad . . . And yet, God bless Democracy, dissent, and the NHS Which underpins our civic decency.

1963 Ruth Fainlight World Events

Nineteen sixty three: Kennedy is assassinated, The Beatles release their first album, and Valentina Tereshkova floats weightless against a faint radiation from the final remnants of the Big Bang – the first woman in space.

I had to Google "world events" for that year, but there was no problem remembering what I'd been doing.

We travelled back from Morocco, because Alan was invited to Russia, and now that Ted had left her, Sylvia and I planned to spend that month together in North Tawton with our three babies (and my nanny to make it possible), talking, walking, and writing poetry.

I was the new mother: my son a few months the younger; but she already had a daughter, plus a published first collection – which made me feel competitive, and I didn't like that! – although she envied my glamorous life, she confessed. But we acknowledged so much in common, with delight.

That poetic meeting never happened, yet I dream about it. What more to say? Everyone knows the story's ending.

Credit cards, Valium, cassette tapes, remote controls for TV: developments of nineteen sixty three. And more events. Now each protagonist of this sad tale, bar me, is dead – yet all of us are blessed: we live through poetry.

Her hair is cut into that perfect slant – An innovation circa '64 by Vidal Sassoon. She's wearing C&A's best effort at Quant Ending just below the knicker-line, daisy-strewn. Keeping herself in tights could blow her grant Entirely, so each precious pair is soon Spattered with nail-varnish dots that stop each run. She's a girl, eighteen – just wants to have fun.

She's not "a chick". Not yet. Besides, by then She'll find the term "offensive". "Dollybird", to quote Her favourite mags, is what she aspires to when Her head's still full of Honey and Petticoat.It's almost the last year that, quite this blithely, men Up ladders or on building sites wolf-whistle to note The approval they're sure she will appreciate. Why not? She did it for their benefit, looks great.

Nor does she object. Wouldn't think she has the right. Though when that lech of a lecturer comments on her tits To a male classmate, openly, she might Feel – quick as a run in nylon – that it's Not what ought to happen, is not polite, She'll burn, but smile, have no word that fits The insult, can't subject it to language's prism. In sixty-six there's plenty sex, but not "sexism".

Soon: The Female Eunuch and enough Will be enough. Thanks to newfound feminism and Greer, Women'll have the words for all this stuff, What already rankles, but confuses her, will seem clear And she'll (consciously) be no one's "bit of fluff" Or "skirt" or "crumpet". She'll know the rule is "gay" not "queer", "Ms" not "Miss" or "Mrs" – she'll happily obey it And, sure as the Pill in her pocket, that's how she'll say it.

This photo's saying nothing, is black and white, opaque. A frozen moment, not a memory. The boyfriend with the Pentax took it for the sake Of taking it, a shot among many others, randomly, To see how it would develop. Didn't imagine it'd make An image so typical it'd capture time so perfectly. How does she feel? Hey, girl, did it feel strange To be waiting for the a-changing times to change?

1969 Christopher Reid The Clearing

The Biba boutique in London in the 1960s. Photograph: Peter Mitchell/Camera Press

Was it Biba, or was it the schmatta bazaar of Carnaby Street? Did a narcoleptic sitar muddle the air like incense, or was there some more laddish beat? The Stones? The Doors? Had somebody pinned the Pirate Jesus face of Che Guevara to the wall, or Waterhouse's orgasmically grieving, teenaged Lady of Shalott? No matter. What I do recall is a clearing in the jungle, where, on a table, half a dozen shallow pot-pourri bowls, brimming with petal-coloured knickers, encircled the bellied bulk of an old, contemplative cash register. Oblation? Prayer? Or what? Please don't ask me to explain, or to remember anything else. I was there.

When I came home unexpectedly in the mid-afternoon and found an extra knife and fork still wet and glittering on the draining-board beside your own, I knew at once. I ran upstairs and called your name in our ruined bedroom

but you had already left. Soon afterwards I saw Margaret Thatcher taking over the Tory party from Edward Heath, and one evening – unless I was mistaken – the dead body of P. G. Wodehouse borne on a tank into the ruins of Saigon.

1977 Imtiaz Dharker 1977 (I am quite sure of this)

The Sex Pistols in celebratory mood, 1977. Photograph: Hulton Archive

Some Glaswegians still speak of the Silver Jubilee and the Queen's cavalcade sailing off from George Square on a sea of Union Jacks. Others recall that around the same time the Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen was black-listed by the BBC

but what I remember is that one night I danced in spangled hotpants, with a boy in polyester flares (I am quite sure of this), in time, on track, one hand in the air, one step forward, one step back.

Time is easily tangled. It falls over its own feet. That year peeled itself as perfectly as the rings around Uranus. Smallpox was eradicated, miles of fibre optics laid, personal computers offered to the masses. People said it had never been so good

and what I remember is the popcorn mix at Regal Cinema, salt over sweet, the triumph of good over evil, light-sabres slashing the air in synchronised time, on track, one step forward, one step back.

People said it had never been so bad, Bengal hit by a cyclone, snow in Miami, New York plunged into darkness. and out of the sky a fireball fell on Innisfree. People said it was a sign. And that was the year Steve Biko died.

Other people died in other years, but that year Groucho Marx and Charlie Chaplin died. Jacques Prevert and Robert Lowell died. In Memphis, Elvis died. Still, someone called Roy Sullivan was struck by lightning for the seventh time and survived

but because of the odd way time unfolds, what I remember is the last few seconds, the countdown under a glitterball (I am quite sure of this), light flashing in your eyes and your hair as you moved in time, on track, one hand in the air, one step forward, one step back,

and ah, ah, ah, ah, staying alive. Staying alive.

1978 Alan Jenkins Between

Some time between Plenty and Betrayal, Between Kate Nelligan in a black Waisted plunge-line '50s dress Looking me straight in the eye When she took her bow, and the back Of Penelope Wilton's mini-skirt, As "Jerry" clutched her arse, Riding up dangerously high;

Between my last pair of denim Hipster flares and my first Pair of corduroy Oxford bags, Between wanting to be taken for The standard hippy-Fauntleroy And the lost Picture Post boy Who'd spat some lyrical venom And died in the Spanish Civil War;

Between "Night Fever" and "Some Girls", Between my monkish book-lined cell And a bijou flat in Battersea Paid for by the invisible man, Between my last-ever Mandrax And my first line of coke (I'd gone Straight to drug heaven from drug hell), Between invasion and peace plan;

Between a love I'd counted on And the end of that self-flattery, You were born, whom I met over kirs Thirty years later. Between first kiss And last, between offering your tail, Your mobile number and email address And administering the coup de grace, You brought me to my knees. To this.

He had been there since '55, his lungs thick with smoke and urea, the wicks of his eyes damp, like the walls of the furnace he tended for years, till they laid him off. He'd thought he would be glad to say goodbye; but that last shift, walking away with the cold flask and rolled-up newspaper tucked in his coat, he turned to the sudden black where the ovens had been: wet slag, and frost on the tracks and the last sacks of by-product shipped out to beet-farms and landfill. With severance pay and two years to go till his pension, he'd money enough to survive; but he hated to see himself idle, a man on his own, his wife dead, his grandchildren grown and moved away. He rarely saw his son; though, once, in a bar on the Beanfield, he found him sitting alone with The Mirror: Natalie Wood had drowned in the ocean, near Catalina, a hint of champagne on her breath, and the longtime child star's bewildered smile a memory now, as she stared up out of the picture and both of them, father and son, remembered how, long ago, they had almost loved her, miming that song about time through her immigrant smile that neither could disbelieve as hard as he tried – somewhere, a time and a place – since there had to be something.

The remains of an Argentine trench from the war for the possession of the Falkland islands, 1982. Photograph: Daniel Garcia/AFP/Getty Images

There the great gathered with gallant allies, massing on the foreshore, fitted out marvellously. Dukes and statesmen, some strutting on their steeds, Earls of England, armies of archers, stout sheriffs shouting sharp instructions to the troops who rallied before the Round Table, assigning soldiers to certain lords on the seafront, in the south, at their sovereign's say so. The barges being ready they rowed to the beach to ferry aboard horses and fine battle-helmets, loading the livestock in their livery and tack, then the tents, the tough shields, tools to lay siege, canopies, kit bags, exquisite coffers, ponies, hackneys, horses-of-armour . . . thus the stuff of stern knights was safely stored. And when all stock was stowed they stalled no longer, timing their untying with the turn of the tide; ships of all sizes ran up their sails, all unfurling at the moment of their monarch's command, and hands at the gunwales hauled up the great anchors, watermen wise to the ways of the waves. The crew at the bow began coiling in the cables of the carriers and cutters and Flemish crafts; they drew sails to the top, they tended the tiller, they stood along the starboard singing their shanties.

So the port's proudest ships found plentiful depth and surged at full sail into changeable seas. Without anyone being hurt they hauled in the skiffs: shipmates looked sharp to shutter the portholes and tested depth by lowering lead from the luff. They looked to the lodestar as daylight lessened, reckoned a good route when mist rose around them, used their knowing with the needle-and-stone through the night, when for dread of the dark they dropped their speed, all the seadogs striking the sails at a stroke.

Through the window everything was horizontal. In cars and ships and woods, folk died. Small trees scattered like matchsticks and a whole shed flew by. The world roared. A branch broke into the kitchen, strewed twigs into the banging cupboard, filled broken crocks with leaves. I heard a tricycle roll up and down the attic as the firmament streamed through smashed tiles.

I loved you but I loved the wind more, wanted to be as horizontal as the tree tops, to cling to the planet by my last fingernail, singing into the rush, into the dark. I didn't know then I would watch my beloveds peel off the earth

each side of me, flying among tiles, bins, caravans, car doors and chimney pots, watch them turn themselves into flotsam and disappear as wholly as the pier the next morning, a Friday, mid- October. Gone, split, vamoosed like the fifteen million trees.

1990 Philip Gross Home

for John Gross

One day, in that year, and so quietly that not the closest of us guessed, the history of Europe changed.

I don't mean votes and constitutions, old flags in the attic half a century now tentative petals again,

but one day, one night out beyond the houselights, beside one of those fires you would tend, and attend,

and chivvy patiently to sleep. (So many leaves, that year, as if they were pouring in on quite another wind.)

It may be some recording angel, veiled or given momentary body by a furl of smoke, might have seen

the moment when, thin blue letter in hand saying Come, you can come home now, you knew: the place you'd dreamed

of going back to, with a family, three horses, a path through the fields, was nowhere. What could I do

by going, you said later, except see it was gone? Blue paper crinkling in the fire. Estonia was safe, here, inside you.

Midnight. Connaught Square. A headlight beam finds Cherie just back from her speaking date. She looks at you. Less animal of late. You lose no sleep but wake within a dream. Your favourite: that old divided dark; the white square at your neck; your good ear bent towards the long sighs of your penitent. You rinse a thousand souls before the lark and wake refreshed, if somewhat at a loss as to why they seem so lost for words. They are your dead, who still rose to the birds the day we filled the booths and made the cross, before you'd forced them howling to their knees to suffer your attentions. Spare us. Please.

2001 Lavinia Greenlaw Monolith

It was the fact of what happened. It stood before us like a locked dimension.

We gathered numbers, rehearsed names, stored a million images.

Still the door would not open. There was no door.

It stood before us. Featureless.

Neither beginning nor ending, it was the new – blank, immoveable.

2006 Tishani DoshiLove Poem Disguised as an Elegy

Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein shouts as he receives a guilty verdict during his trial, 5 November 2006. Photograph: Getty Images

When I see you these days you are always at a party, standing by a window, alone, growing younger and younger. Heaven's great, you say. You and Saddam are pals, and from this distance, everything is forgiven. Do you remember when … But never mind. It's always that last picture: you propped up in bed, your legs slightly raised, the smell of piss, purple sores, a rebel body in disrepair. Hush, you say, I have to go, but remember, the heart isn't a muscle, it isn't even a thing that beats. It's what you love. It's what you're doing today.

There'll be a time you grow so young you won't know me, and this is terrifying because I still have things to ask about the body and dying and where memories go to live. Just once, I'd like to see you with the flower girls back at the gate. It wouldn't matter then, if nothing like you ever happened to me again. It would have been enough to have seen you change into something small and golden, charging off in to the waves on your strong, white legs. What need would there be to speak of danger, after you were gone, vanished, like a dream into the day.

for Chandralekha, who died on 30 December 2006, the same day that Saddam Hussein was executed, also, the auspicious Hindu day of Vaikuntha Ekadashi, when the gates of heaven are supposedly open to all.

History as water, I lie back, remember it all. You could say I drink to recall; run softly till you end your song. I reflect. There was a whale in me; a King's daughter livid in a boat. A severed head fell from its spike, splashed. There was Fire – birds flailed in me with burning wings – Ice – a whole ox roasting where I froze, frost fair – Fog – four months sunless, moonless, spooked by ships – Flood – I flowed into Westminster Hall where lawyers rowed in wherries, worried – Blitz – the sky was war; I filmed it. Cut. I held the Marchioness. My salmon fed apprentices until I choked on sewage; my foul breath shut Parliament. There was lament at every stroke of every oar which dragged the virgin's barge downstream. Always bells; their timed sound, somewhen, in my tamed tides, deep. Caesar named me. I taste the drowned. A Queen sails now into the sun, flotilla a thousand proud; my dazzled surface gargling the crown.

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